


One Of Us Is Going Down

by DefaltManifesto



Series: 15 Day Lyric Challenge [8]
Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Grief/Mourning, Identity Issues, Implied Sexual Content, Revenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-09
Updated: 2018-12-09
Packaged: 2019-09-14 16:08:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16916055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DefaltManifesto/pseuds/DefaltManifesto
Summary: “You’re the only one like me,” Caellach says one night as they lie side by side in the dark.“How do you figure?” Joshua asks.“You get what it’s about there, on the battle field.”Joshua rolls away from him. “Yeah? And what’s it about to you?”“Glory."





	One Of Us Is Going Down

**Author's Note:**

> "Defalt, when will you stop writing about Joshua??" When I want to lol but for real I do want to write a longfic about Joshua one day. It'll happen. Today's fic is from the lyric "I'm not runnin'/it's a little different now/'cause one of us is going/one of us is going down" from You're Going Down by Sick Puppies. Such an old school emojified song, I love it. Also let's be real - You ALL use Joshua to kill Caellach don't you. Don't you. It must be done that way.
> 
> Comments are loved. Title from the song mentioned above. 
> 
> Find me on twitter @ Defaltmanifesto

Joshua puts a sword through Caellach’s chest. His mother remains dead.

 

-.-

 

Joshua meets Caellach in a tavern a day’s travel south of Jehanna’s capitol. He watches from the corner of the bar as Caellach cheats at a game of cards and starts a full-on brawl when he gets caught. He removes himself and waits outside. It wouldn’t do to be caught so early on and dragged back to the palace. He catches Caellach’s wrist on his way out, ducking out of the way of the punch Caellach throws. He wrenches Caellach’s wrist down and twists them, pinning him up against the wall.

“Easy there,” he says. “You’re a mercenary right?”

Caellach wipes blood off his lips with his free hand. “Yeah, you looking for a job?”

Joshua nods.

Later, he’ll wonder what possessed him to go after a man like Caellach. Later, he’ll wonder if he had let Caellach wander off into the night if things would have been different. If his mother would have survived.

 

-.-

 

Caellach teaches him how to use a sword better than anyone in the royal army. He teaches him to duck and weave, teaches him how to use speed to overwhelm his enemies instead of relying on strength. Strength is what Caellach exceeds at. No matter how many late night exercises Joshua does at camp, he remains lean and wiry.

But he’s okay with that.

It’s so nice, after all, to feel Caellach pin him to his sleeping roll. It’s nice to fight and lose after a day of fighting to survive. Losing to Caellach…well, it doesn’t feel like losing.

 

-.-

 

Eight years later, it’s in a skirmish fight near Carcino between two robber barons in a pissing match that he first sees it.

He watches Caellach knock back an enemy mercenary, some kid who doesn’t even look like he can grow a beard yet and who’s blade slides out of his trembling hands as soon as he hits the ground. Caellach swings his axe and cleaves his head in two. It’s merciless, ruthless. Joshua’s stomach rolls as Caellach grins down at the gore before yanking his axe free and heading further into battle.

It’s one of the most painful things he’s done, keeping his head straight and finishing off the battle. After, when they pitch camp, he returns to the battlefield. He ignores the looters and finds the boy Caellach murdered after what would have been a surrender, digs through his pockets until he finds a letter from his mother. The boy’s name is Colin, fifteen years old, pushed into the mercenary life after his father died.

Joshua takes all the gold he’s earned and mails it to Colin’s mother at the next town. He doesn’t let Caellach take him to bed, not anymore.

 

-.-

 

He wonders how he missed it. Was he blinded by Caellach’s charm, his looks, his attraction? He’d stayed for so long, longer than he intended, to follow in Caellach’s shadow as they drifted from company to company, battle to battle, and yet now….now the man’s he been slowly falling in love with, perhaps he’s not really a man at all.

No man kills a child who tries to surrender. Only a monster could.

Joshua didn’t leave his home to become a monster. He left to become a man, to become someone fit for the crown in the way he thought his mother could never be, perched on her throne so far above it all, so far above him. He just never realized how low he could fall trying to outrun her.

 

-.-

 

“You’re the only one like me,” Caellach says one night as they lie side by side in the dark.          

“How do you figure?” Joshua asks.

“You get what it’s about there, on the battle field.”

Joshua rolls away from him. “Yeah? And what’s it about to you?”

“Glory.

Everyone else gets so caught up in the morals, whining about whether it’s wrong or right, or if the job’s gonna make enough for them to send home, but that’s not how it is for you,” Caellach says. “You’re a risk taker like me. Risk takers…we like glory. We don’t sweat the small stuff.”

Joshua hums out a noise of assent and stays awake the whole night.

 

-.-

 

Caellach leaves the next day. Even without his presence, Joshua feels him in every breath, every twist of his own body as he remembers who taught him. He can’t get clean. He can’t wash the innocent deaths from his hands, can’t hide from how he enabled someone like Caellach for so long. He can’t stay.

Joshua heads for Grado.

 

-.-

 

He wonders how he’s supposed to tell the Princess who he is as they slip through Carcino. Ever since they picked up Gerik and his crew, he’s been getting looks. He knows Gerik recognizes him, or at the very least suspects the truth, but Joshua avoids him and keeps his head down as they head into Jehanna and towards his home, desperate for the illusion to last a little longer.

It’s been a decade since he’s been home, and he’s made friends with Princess Eirika’s motley band of royal army loyalists and homeless stragglers turned snipers and assassins. He doesn’t want that to change when they realize who he is.

He finds those worries are nowhere to be found as he rushes to his mother’s side, slicks his hands with her blood as he tries to mend a decade of betrayal in the last seconds of her life. He wants to scream, but he doesn’t dare. He’s a King now.

 

-.-

 

When he sees Caellach outside the palace, the desert wind howling, the only home he knew burning with his mother’s corpse still inside, and an army closing in on them on all sides, he finds not the thrill of the gamble for life that each battle is. He feels rage, cool and calm. He ignores Eirika’s orders and cuts himself a path through the sand, finding footing where Grado soldiers struggle.

He confirms what he knew to be true the moment he’d seen his mother. He confirms Caellach’s the one who cut her down. He confirms Caellach’s jealousy, his rage, and he lets him charge across the sand.

He pivots the way Caellach taught him a decade a go and cuts him down.

 

-.-

 

Innes crouches beside him where he sits, far from the campfire at the edge of camp. Joshua sharpens his blade and doesn’t look at him.

"I’m sorry,” Innes says. “About your mother.”

“Thank you for your condolences,” Joshua says.

"Don’t do that,” Innes says.

Joshua scrapes the whetstone against his blade, lets the sound ring through the air, digs his nails into the rock. “Do what?”

“Pretend you’re something you’re not,” Innes says.

Joshua laughs and hurls the stone away from him, hysteria clawing at his chest. “I lied for the last ten years about who I am to everyone I ever met. You want a King, you’ll get a King.”

“I don’t want a King,” Innes says. “I more than most know the burden of that title. I want you, Joshua. The last ten years of your life were not a waste, even if you did leave your mother’s side in anger. They shaped you into the man you are now. A man who can rebuild his country and defend it. No one here wants you to act like anything other than yourself.”

“And what if I’m just like him?” Joshua asks, looking over at him.

Innes’ lip curls, the subtle snarl of disgust he’s grown so used to seeing. “You’ll never be like Caellach. The man is a dog.”

“I was a mercenary too,” Joshua says.

Innes shakes his head. “That’s not what I mean. Gerik is a mercenary and I trust him with my life, I trust him with every…with everything. Trust me, Joshua. You’re nothing like him. I have a good judge for character.”

Joshua stares down at his blade. “I hope you’re right.”

 


End file.
